RC3 Install Report

On 05/18/2010 02:57 AM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>> Unfortunately the folks making those decisions are more concerned with the
> religious issue of free open source than "works for most people." They are
> unlikely to ever make it easy to install the vendor drivers. and frequently
> claim capabilities for the kernel drivers which in practice are only present for
> recent top of the line 3D hardware.
>
I cringe whenever I hear people describe free software as religious
issue. Religion is based on blind belief and dogma. Free software is a
set of principles and open source is a development methodology. In the
case of non-free drivers, even ignoring the principles and the benefits
of the development methodology, there is the simple matter of support.
Fedora has the expertise necessary to fix issues in Xorg drivers but the
non-free drivers are completely unsupportable by Fedora since the source
is closed. While making it easy might seem a benefit in the shorter
run, it is unsustainable in the longer run. Newer kernel revisions
will often break the non-free drivers in ways we cannot do anything
about and instead of leading users to believe it is a supportable
option, we maintain a distance over them. Setting aside all this,
these drivers are in a legal gray area and enabling support increases
the liability for any distribution.
We don't hide the fact that Fedora does not and will not support
proprietary drivers or spend anytime making it easier to install. If
you disagree with that principle, ther are other distributions to choose
from.
Rahul